


Flawless

by lollard



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: beyoncé though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollard/pseuds/lollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack might be a good checking coach, but Shitty and Queen Bey are great life coaches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flawless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brilligspoons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brilligspoons/gifts).



Eric doesn’t see his father in the summers, pretty much. In eighth grade, when it became clear that he belonged on the ice and not out on the field in the punishing sun, his father fully became Coach: _not even special teams?_ Coach said in his truck one day, eyes on the road. _We could get you kicking. Little guys can kick._

Flushing the color of his daddy’s UGA polo, Eric reminded him that they tried it, and it didn’t go so well. _But we could try it again. I guess. If you want._

 _Do it because you want it, not because it’ll please me_ , his father said, curt, and then after that they just didn’t talk about it any more. Coach spent a lot of time in the Morgan County High School fieldhouse, preparing for his first season in Madison. Dicky did his summer reading assignment for honors freshman English -- _Lord of the Flies_ and _Pride and Prejudice_ \-- and baked with his mother, after dark so the oven wouldn’t completely overpower the air conditioning, preferably when Coach was in the den watching the Braves.

Coach doesn’t call him Dicky, not to his face. (He's heard Coach refer to him as _the boy_ while talking to his mother.) It’s always _son_ , or  _Junior_. Or, more often, nothing at all.

The move to Madison doubled their drive time to the rink -- more than an hour, without traffic. Eric gets used to doing his homework in the car while his mother drives, with Beyonce breaks every ten minutes (or ten pages, or ten precalc problems). He’s pretty sure his father would complain about the time and gas it takes to get there if it weren’t for the twice-weekly hockey practices, and games on Saturdays. Because that means Coach’s son is an athlete. That means Coach doesn’t have to worry about the spandex and the sashes his son wears the rest of the time at the rink.

All of which is to say: when Eric Bittle gets an athletic scholarship to a school up north for a contact sport, Coach tells everyone at school with a doofy grin that Eric can’t recall ever seeing on his face before.

So. You know. That’s something.

  
***

Coach doesn’t come up to Samwell with them because football conditioning has started, and Eric waits until his mother leaves before he starts decorating his side of his freshman dorm room. Christmas lights, his Queen Bey poster -- those are easy. The small state flag he unrolls, smooths out, contemplates… the flag is more difficult. He’s not sure it belongs here, even though he went to the trouble to get it and bring it up with him.

He’d heard a couple of his dad’s players talking about where to get the ‘56 Georgia flag -- “the _real_ flag,” one of the meatheads said -- so they could put it up in their rooms, or fly it from the back of the other one’s pickup. Eric isn’t clear on a lot about the flag’s history, because that whole dust-up with Roy Barnes happened when he was five, and the referendum on the current flag happened when he was eight. But he’s pretty clear on the part where the boys who fly the old flag, or just the stars and bars, have a lot of overlap with the boys who locked him in the utility closet overnight in seventh grade.

And he’s pretty clear that he’s proud to be from Georgia. So if they’re going to get flags -- well. He’s an athlete, too. He can have _his_ flag in _his_ room. It’s not like anyone where he’s going will be able to recognize it. It’s another secret, one it’s safe to have.

After some thought, and a few days, he balls up two little pieces of sticky-tack and hangs the flag over his bed, close to the corner, where he can see it when he wakes up.

  
***

Entering Faber feels like entering church, especially at four in the morning. When the ice is smooth and unharmed by blades, and it feels like it’ll go on forever, and then the sun starts to come up beyond? Eric feels as though he really _belongs_. He’s never skated in a rink with windows before this, and even though the scuffed boards look the same as any number of rinks in the southeast, it’s easy to forget the dents and black marks, as though the light alone is enough to make everything feel brand new, and possible. Though he dutifully goes to church with his mother when he’s in Madison, Eric can’t say he’s ever gotten so close to the feeling you’re supposed to get in church as he does on the ice in Faber.

The feeling only lasts until Jack checks him for the first time that morning, but it’s nice that it’s there at all.

And he does appreciate what Jack is trying to do. Part of it's got to be self-serving -- it's a lot easier to look good to NHL scouts if you're playing on a good team, Eric figures -- but Jack is patient. Kind, even. While he's relentless in his pursuit of good technique, Jack has a knack for knowing when Eric is getting too close to a meltdown and sends him over the boards for a two-minute water break, always with a gruff, "You're getting it, Bittle."

At the end of one of those two-minute periods, close to the time when he and Jack have to get off the ice, Eric looks up to see Shitty sprawled on a top bleacher, his head turned so he can watch Jack and Eric at work. Eric's pretty sure he's never seen Shitty willingly awake before seven. 

When Jack nods and skates off the ice, Shitty comes wandering down the bleachers, one giant step after another, almost like he’s dancing. Eric’s pretty sure he’s using one of Lardo’s thigh-highs as a headband. It’s a good look, he thinks, with the lace, but before he tells Shitty so, he should get water because he might be about to die. He paws at his helmet before he takes off his gloves.

Shitty leans against the rail. “Looking good out there, Bitty.”

Eric stumbles off the ice, plops onto the bench, picks up his bottle. “Thanks. Jack’s a good teacher.”

“I’m gonna commit the cardinal sin of theorizing in advance of my coffee, because it’s ass o’clock, you know that?”  
  
“...was that a sentence? That was a sentence, right?”

“You belong on the team because you’re fast and you got good hands, right? You give ‘em the ol’ Bittle spin-o-rama -- “ Shitty brings both hands sharply down to the left, making a _whoosh_ sound with puckered lips. “ -- and they never know what hit ‘em. Deke like a dream, pass to Jack, and it’s back down before they got time to hit you.”

“Most of the time,” Eric murmurs.

“Because you keep moving, they won’t touch you, right? Looks like Jack’s spending a lot of time on getting you to plant your skates like a tree or some shit. It’s a thing you’re not used to.”

Eric wonders if Shitty might be considering a career as a self-help coach. One who swears a lot. He guesses that self-help coaches might get to keep their sick flow.

"So I'm gonna pass on a little advice, Bitty. You could meditate on it over one of your PSLs. You don't always have to get out of the way. You have the right to take up space."

He's not sure what his face is doing, but whatever it is, it's enough to make Shitty pull his Lardo headband off, shake out his hair, and clap Eric on the shoulder. "Think about it," he calls, wandering off.

It is too early and he is wearing too many pads for this, Eric thinks, and squirts water in his face before stumbling off to the locker room.

*** 

When Eric gets back to his room, he stops, looks at the whole thing. 

He puts his gear bag in the middle of the floor. His roommate is never there anyway.

Slowly he bends, plugs in the lights. Crosses to his bed. Re-nestles Señor Bunny in his spot against the pillow, tucked in under the covers. Then he turns to his laptop, cues up a track, and starts to gather his laundry before somebody else gets to the washer before him, [singing under his breath](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyuUWOnS9BY). "I woke up like this. I woke up like this."

Trucking his basket down to the first floor, he muses aloud to the quiet hallway: "Shitty and Bey have some sick flow."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Lexie for cheerleading. <3


End file.
